Maybe I am seeing this wrong. I am certainly open to opinions but it seems to me like the changes to the Florida Stand Your Ground signed into law by Rick Scott last Friday is a win for the criminals.

If you don't know what the change is about - here it is. The original stand your ground law says that if you shoot someone and claim self defense you can do a pretrial hearing where you have an opportunity to convince a judge it was self defense. If he/she agrees you go on your merry way without having to stand trial...

The change, however, essentially puts all burden of proof in a pretrial stand your ground hearing on the prosecutors. I guess this sounds good in theory since thats how the justice system is supposed to work except for one thing. The pretrial hearing isnt a trial - it never was. The stand your ground law was put in place as a first line of defense for law abiding citizens to protect themselves from prosecution but the hearing itself is not prosecution.

My concern here is that this change is basically going to give criminals 2 chances to get off. Since the prosecution is going to have to try the case twice it will have to show its full hand in the first trial which is a gimmie loss for the defendant if they do in fact lose. This is going to make it way easier for a defense to come up with bullshit tactics to defeat the prosecution. Its also going to make it twice as expensive for the prosecution to try cases. They might not be able to afford to prosecute real bad guys.

I know that stand your ground has been under attack and anti gun prosecutors do try to make examples by prosecuting self defense cases for headlines but I think mostly prosecutors don't want to try losing cases. its bad for business - their careers - their bosses' careers etc etc. So ideally they only want to try cases they can win. Now they have to try every real bad guy twice just to get him once? They might not even bother anymore.

For those who don't agree with this - as I said, I am open to opinions...

Do supporters of this law think its the right of every person who shoots someone to get 2 trials?

Do supporters of this law think this is going to stop more prosecutions of true self defense cases over stopping criminals from avoiding the real trials and spying prosecution strategy by wasting time and money by claiming self defense every time they kill someone?

Can you support this change and still complain when dangerous criminals are arrested, but not prosecuted and released back into society?

I mean - this isn't even an anti-gun situation - gun grabbers are going to complain about every single pro gun law no matter what it is at any time so we can assume their opinions are always completely null and void on any legislation that isnt anti gun. So don't we have a responsibility to look at pro gun legislation and regulate it internally in the pro gun community - or should we just assume anything that looks like it might be pro gun should pass regardless of the consequences - blindly - just like the anti-gunners.

And why can this legislation appear and get passed out of nowhere, but we still don't have campus carry when its been needed for many years now.

Michael is a career programmer who started easy bake gun club with his friends when they couldn't go shooting because of the great ammo shortage of 2012. When he isn't writing code or shooting guns, he can be found playing video games or recording sissy new wave nerd rock.